Feb 25, 2010 -- When it first appeared in the 1930s, the paperback was regarded with suspicion and alarm in the book industry. Deploying a brand new technology, it brought cheap literature to the masses, transforming reading habits. The revolution shook the gentlemanly world of publishing to its core.

With the relationship between the public and the traditional powerbrokers of the hardback era under huge threat, the fear was that profits would crumble.

Three quarters of a century later the British company behind this disruptive force, Penguin, finds itself at the centre of another epoch defining upheaval.